Junk
I grew up when America was first discussing “junk food”: ready-to-eat foods that were filling, and tasty, but neither nutritious nor healthy. I feel like we’ve ...
Category: movies & television
The Long View on YouTube
If we take the long view, YouTube is a platform for artists – outsider mostly, many of whom make art about their own lives – and educators. The “how”...
that migrant life
When you’re a migrant, be it a refugee or an immigrant, you’re forever an outsider. You’re no longer fully of the culture you left and yo...
First families
I slept fitfully and repeatedly dreamed of the migrant family, as enshrined by Christianity. La familia sagrada. The holy family versus Herod, the king. The fam...
Los Angeles
Rene Russo Get Shorty (1995), Nightcrawler (2014)
War Games, Fail-Safe, Dr. Strangelove
In 1998, there were two movies about a natural catastrophe: Armageddon & Deep Impact. In 2006, there were two movies about magicians living outside the real...
Underground
Magicians show you things you don’t know you’re seeing. Prosecutors tell you things you don’t realize you’re hearing. Movies use a similar ploy: they make you f...
the normal
I just scanned the most recent issue of “14 y medio”, a banned / clandestine news digest from Cuba. You won’t be surprised that the stories are about struggle. ...
Invasions
One of the charms of Star Wars was the contrast of robots and serfs, space ships and lords. High technology and feudalism. If you follow US politics (don’t, it’...
glowing with possibility
While reading the script for Pulp Fiction, I came across a reference to Repo Man which reminded me of a scene from the recent Atlanta. Apparently, this visual t...
Motherhood and the workplace
The movie Arrival (2016) and the movie Alien (1979) are contrasting takes on motherhood and women in the workplace. In Arrival, a successful professional woman ...
The industry of memory
On The Sympathizer: Charlie Rose: You talk about the industry of memory. What’s that? Viet Thanh Nguyen: Well, we like to think that our memories are all ...
Characters Matter
If you’re a young Hispanic interested in a career in acting, seeing a Hispanic actor on the screen could validate your professional interest. If you’...
Bursts out into star-sprinkled space.
From Alien by Walter Hill, David Giler and Dan O’Bannon: Outside the windows, clouds, clouds, clouds. Another tremor runs through the ship. The crews eyes...
how much show, how much tell
an estimation of dialogue in a set of mostly thriller movies. dialogue taken from popular subtitle files.
language, screenwriting
We are advised to not include Spanish language dialogue in an English language script. Rather, every character should, at first, speak English and then their wo...
bathrooms, blades
the lobster (2015), se7en (1995)
epidemics, as seen in zombie movies
the victim becomes the victimizer. human contact – the very thing that makes us human – kills us. it’s a total and absolute threat to the human condition....
a monologue from 28 Days Later
A lyrical, precise monologue by Alex Garland, excerpted: It started as rioting, and right from the beginning you knew this was different. Because it was happeni...
movies are magic tricks
magic tricks work when the audience is not fully aware of what they are seeing. movies are the same. when it works, the audience says: “i didn’t see...